The JSE was slightly higher at noon on Thursday lifted by heavyweight miners with mergers and acquisitions news in focus after global resource giant Rio Tinto offered to buy Alcan. At 12.02pm, the all-share index was up 0,17%. Resources gained 0,41% and the gold-mining index gained by the same margin.
A powerful typhoon headed north towards Japan on Thursday, threatening to rake the southern islands of Okinawa and the country’s main islands with torrential rain and high winds. Typhoon Man-yi was 600km south of the Okinawan city of Naha at 1pm (4am GMT) and moving north north-west at 25km/h.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to authorise up to 26 000 troops and police for Darfur but implementation will take months providing the world body finds enough personnel and Sudan cooperates. On Wednesday, Britain, France and Ghana circulated a draft resolution for a joint African Union-UN force.
The Rugby World Cup’s dominance of the international calendar has turned Saturday’s Tri-Nations Test between New Zealand and South Africa in Christchurch into little more than a glorified warm-up match. South Africa have fielded a weakened team for the meeting between two of the sport’s fiercest rivals, while New Zealand made seven changes.
Democratic Alliance leader and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille was named Newsmaker of the Year for 2006 by the National Press Club in Pretoria on Wednesday. The runner-up was Kabelo Thibedi, who held hostage a Department of Home Affairs official in a desperate attempt to obtain his identity document.
The death of actor Bill Flynn on Wednesday will leave a huge hole in the drama world, his friend of 40 years and fellow actor Paul Slabolepszy said. ”As a creative artist, Bill was one of the best in the world,” said Slabolepszy, who had once been a student with Flynn at the University of Cape Town. ”This is such a shock.”
The government withdrew the licences of all private slaughterhouses on Wednesday, accusing them of defying orders to reduce meat prices by 50% in the state’s attempts to rein in rampant inflation. Their closure was expected to worsen already severe meat shortages.
Rudy Giuliani’s most compelling credential for his run for the White House — his leadership during the September 11 terror attacks — was criticised on Wednesday by fire union leaders and relatives of firefighters killed at the World Trade Centre. His rivals, Republican campaign strategists and political commentators were divided on Wednesday over whether he is capable of a comeback.
Pakistanis buried bodies on Thursday from among more than 70 followers of a revolutionary cleric, a day after commandos killed the last few gunmen hiding in the ruins of the Red Mosque. Anger ran deep in tribal parts of north-west Pakistan, though sentiment in most of the country sided with President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to send in the army.
A comparison of Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s nationalism to that of Nazism prompted outrage on Thursday, with one top minister calling the former leader who said it an ”unguided missile”. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who led the country from 1991 until defeated by Howard in 1996, used a speech on Wednesday to accuse Howard of being a Nazi-like nationalist.